I Dial Your Number
by WonderfulWonderful
Summary: My name is Elizabeth Tanner and I am the first girl to ever attend Hell-ton. Elizabeth never in her wildest dreams thought that she would be attending Welton Academy, but she is and it's a far cry away from Ridgeway High where she left her old life behind. (Originally A Ridgeway Girl in a Welton Hall)
1. Chapter 1

Dew clung to the blades of grass as I walked that morning. It had rained all night and even as I walked in the early morning sun I could still feel the drizzle of the faded storm falling on my hair and clothes. It was oddly relaxing and I didn't feel as nervous as I did when I woke up. The damp blades tickled at my ankles as I slowly strolled my way back to the silhouette of Welton Academy, my new school. It felt odd to say and but evener odder to think that I would start in a day. Just one day.

As I walked the Welton Halls it felt even stranger. I'd been there for nearly a week, just myself and the teachers, and as I walked I could feel the echo of my steps ringing through every room, every crack and crevice. I took my time to examine paintings, pictures, rooms, everything. I wanted to be ready for the first day. I passed by the display cabinet of pictures and achievements every day during my starter week and eyed up the Boys' faces. I bet they never thought they'd have a girl looking at them, examining them like I did. Perhaps a passing Mom? But not me. Never a girl like me.

My hands trailed along banisters and brushed against the wood panels of the walls. I was just taking in my surroundings, because once everything started up I would be hiding for the most of it. I wouldn't have the same amount of time to explore. I would either be in my separate lessons or dodging out of sight of any boy walking my way.

I saw hardly any teachers, though all were roaming about somewhere. I bumped into Nurse Conrad, the only other woman in the entire school, once. She nodded at me vacantly and carried on her way. She barely even registered me as though even she thought I shouldn't have been in the school. It wasn't the most heart-warming of feelings that was for sure. I passed Dr Hager as I slowly made my way back to my room in one of Welton's small towers. How princess-like.

"I assure you are prepared for tomorrow Miss Tanner?" He said briefly stopping for a bit of small talk.

"I think so" I replied.

"Good, good. Well I shall see you for Trigonometry tomorrow at 4, now don't you forget that"

"I won't sir"

He nodded his head and carried on his way.

I slowly climbed up stairs and followed down hallways and corridors until I finally came to my door. At least I hadn't forgotten where it was for a change. That was always good.

I flopped down on my bed and groaned loudly. Was I really ready? To be a Welton girl? "The first of a new breed" Mr Nolan encouragingly said when I arrived. I picked up the folded piece of Welton Academy paper from on top of my pillow and reread it for the thousandth time. No matter how many times I read it nothing changed, I didn't discover that I'd been wrong the whole time or that the Academy was just having me on. It was real. It was all real. Welton Genuinely wanted to invite a girl into their school.

_Dear Miss Tanner,_

_After speaking with you and your parents on your brother's graduation day regarding your current education, I have come to the decision of offering you a place here at Welton Academy. Now of course the school has been presented strictly as an all Boys' school for the last 99 years, but I am willing to make an exception. After checking with your current school, considering the success of your brother, Henry, and your clear understanding of the subjects we offer, I have decided that you will benefit from studying at Welton and will be a great asset to the school. _

_Now you shall be the only girl at the school and, to not hinder the results of our young boys, I will have you sleep in separate quarters, attend individual lessons with each teacher and dine in a separate room. I do not wish for the boys' to know straight away that a girl is attending Welton and I do not wish to inform any parents as of yet, because I would like to test as to whether or not girls would cause any problems toward our current status as the best preparatory school in the country. I also don't want any complaints from parents regarding places for any of their daughters._

_I hope that you will happily accept the offered place and the terms that you will work by and not turn down a most wonderful opportunity._

_Yours Sincerely,_

_Mr. G .Nolan_

It was so exciting! The first girl in history to attend Welton, but…as I reread the letter, I felt like I had every other time. I felt the anticipated feeling of loneliness. A separate room, separate dining, individual lessons. It all just piled up to being one long year of solitude. The way Nolan wrote it made it sound as though I was something to be ashamed of, but like he said, it was a wonderful opportunity. Most of the girls at my last school were destined for marriage and motherhood. Some were smart enough to fight their way into medicine or law or politics, but not into Welton. My brother could hardly believe it when he saw it, heck I didn't believe. I'd picked up the envelope gingerly on the day it came. I never got letters. Never. The only time I saw an Envelope with even a glimpse of my name was on my birthday, but not any other time. I inspected it the best I could before slicing it open with the pen knife to find the Welton Crest. I quickly chucked it on to my brother Henry; it was probably a misaddressed letter, but it wasn't. It was an invite for a girl to join Welton. For once in nearly 100 years.

I placed the letter back on my pillow and began to lay out my new school uniform on my desk chair. There was my knee length grey skirt, round collared blouse, red and blue striped bow, a black cardigan, white frilly ankle socks and my black pumps. I piled some of my textbooks and other things into my small satchel before resting back on my bed. I looked around the room and thought to myself how different it was to what I'd seen of Henry's on rare visits. It was large, more spacious and it didn't have a roommate. It had small closet and drawer off to the side and then in front of the window was a desk and small bookshelf. I was lucky to say that I had a phone in my room, a special request from my parents just in case I got lonely. I brushed a thumb over the smooth black dial phone with a smile. At least I had something to keep me sane beyond my books. I could even call some of my old friends at Ridgeway if I wanted to. There was also my bed of course with a small bedside table and lamp. I had one more novelty: an en-suite bathroom, so I could avoid all things boy. Nolan had told me it was one of the spare teacher rooms when I arrived. I could already see why. There was one final addition of mine that never came with the room: a framed photograph of me and my friends from Ridgeway at one of the many pep rallies. We were all grinning from ear to ear in our cheer outfits, my friend Chris busy wrapping her arms around her boyfriend Chet and staring dreamily into his deep brown eyes, whilst Anna and Rachel struck one of their cheer poses. I simply blew a raspberry at the camera with a wicked look. I sighed. It was all old memories now.

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**So that is the first chapter of my DPS fan fic. If you liked it then please feel free to follow and fave or even review and if you didn't like it then review anyway. I could always do with the feedback to potentially improve it. Hope to see you on the next chapter :)**


	2. Chapter 2

I slipped out of the shower, droplets of grease and dirt slithering from my silky hair. I shook a nearby towel through my hair and let the water sink into the rough and overused fabric. I wrapped it up into a turban on my head and took another to wrap around my damp body. I felt clean. Different. New. It's what I needed to be with a fresh start ahead. My eyes fell on the pile of school clothes from the day before as I walked out of the small en-suite. This was actually happening. I was actually going to Welton and I was actually starting today. It was insane.

With my towel tightly wrapped around my body, I idly stared out of the window to see proud parents pouring over their sons as they wished them the best for the year. I saw a few girls, most of them no older than 14, waiting in the back of the car while their parents adored their brother. I remembered feeling like that. Like the lesser child. I would sit with a copy of Dad's _Brighton Rock_ and flick through the pages, eyes catching onto words of murder, betrayal and deceit. The book was a gift from an English friend he met during the war. The copy was curled at the corners, edges frayed and pages stiff and rippled. I'd never found a chance to actually read it, just...admire it. I guess to me it was like a piece of comfort as I sat in the backseat, because I at least knew that even though i hated life sometimes, my life wasn't as messed up as the characters'. Soon Enough, like for the young girls, my parents would finally say goodbye to my superior brother and get in the car, me still in the back and drive home, or in the case of most of the 14 year olds: drive off to a fancy all girls finishing school focusing on needlework and etiquette.

I'd slept through the morning assembly. I was banned from going anyway so it hardly mattered. Nolan was simply going to butter up the boys' parents for their money and children with constant reminders of how perfect the school was and how they were the pinnacle of the successful men in the country. The parents would applaud most stupendously, Nolan would creepily grin across the room and the students would moan and sigh to themselves. I'd sat through enough welcome back assemblies because of my brother to know how it all worked.

...

I arrived to English first. The halls were empty, abandoned, hollow; there was hardly any sound. The only sound was the rumbling of footsteps by the boys' dorms. I slipped past in my uniform and satchel on my back. I walked down stairs and through thin halls, never once managing to pass a single soul. They were all too be busy with their own lives. Mr Keating was just unlocking the English classroom as I arrived. He was all dressed up in his fancy black robe. Probably just escaped the various parents with their many curiosities. Of course they'd have to check if the Welton graduate was the real deal, top of the league, the best for their son's education. He beckoned me in with a warm smile. The room was dim, light streaming through the pulled blinds.

"Ah my first lesson" He sighed sinking into his desk chair and giving it a whirl, "I remember reading through long texts of poetry and literature day in and day out in this very classroom."

"Times change" I sighed.

"Yes they most certainly have…for starters we have a girl walking the halls for the first time in 100 years! It's a marvel!" He suddenly dropped his voice and smacked his hand, "I probably shouldn't say that so loud, Nolan might have my neck for it."

Mr Keating flung off his black robe and ran to the windows to pull up the blinds and let the light pour in. He turned to me with his hands dug in his pockets and gestured at every seat in the room, "Take your pick" He said, "You've got quite the variety"

I sank down into a front desk by the window. It had the perfect view over the school grounds, something that would certainly keep my interest for the entire year. Keating dragged up a spare chair and sat in front of me.

"Now Miss Tanner" He grinned, "Poetry. That's what we'll be studying. Do you ready much poetry Miss Tanner?"

"Well my brother once lent me his book over the summer. I read some Thoreau, a bit of Whitman, but not much. I tend to read books more than poetry" I replied

"Do you remember any of the Thoreau or Whitman?"

I furrowed my eyebrows and wracked my brain in the brief seconds between question and answer, "There was something like 'O the bleeding drops of, of…of red? Fallen Cold and dead?'"

He leant back in his chair with a nostalgic smile, "O Captain, My Captain" He sighed.

"Excuse me?"

"That's the name of the poem: 'O Captain, My Captain'."

_O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, _

_The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, _

_The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, _

_While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; _

_But O heart! heart! heart! _

_O the bleeding drops of red, _

_Where on the deck my Captain lies, _

_Fallen cold and dead. _

"The poem is about Abraham Lincoln." Mr Keating said, "If you feel the want to, you can call me O Captain! My Captain! I can see that smirk on your lips. It might sound silly or stupid to you, but I am content with the name... Right! let's talk poetry."

Together we skimmed through the poetry book, taking small extracts from more Whitman, Thoreau, Shelley, Byron, we even dipped into a little Shakespeare. The lesson came to a halt when Mr Keating checked his watch. He jumped out of the chair and began stacking papers.

"Is that the time? You best get going Miss Tanner or you'll be late"

I grabbed my stuff and began shoving it into my bag. I was grateful I'd brought one. I'd heard my brother complain about carrying school books for a lifetime and I knew the place didn't have lockers. I slung the satchel over my shoulder and dragged a hand through my fluffy brown curls.

"Miss Tanner are you busy, by any chance, at 3 tomorrow?" Mr Keating asked as I was about to leave.

"I don't think so" I said, mind reviewing what I could remember of my timetable. I'd thankfully been provided with some free periods.

"If you're free why don't you come by the classroom? We could always chat about poetry or general literature…"

"Ok" I said, "well I've got to go Mr Keating. Thanks for the lesson."

...

I was officially exhausted by the end of the day. Absolutely shattered. I'd gone from a nice relaxed English lesson into absolute hell. First Latin, then Chemistry, then Physics and then Trig! I'd studied my brother's textbooks over the years, sure, and I was the top girl in most of classes in Ridgeway but that was just ridiculous! I felt like a performer that had lost their lines, lost the ability to speak anything. Latin was abysmal. I'd never actually studied Latin greatly. I'd read my brother's books on it, had him speak to me in Latin, I'd even attended one or two masses in Latin with my Catholic cousins, but the words on the board were a complete mess to me.

Chemistry was better. I liked Chemistry at Ridgeway and the curriculum wasn't much different at Welton, but with the stress of Latin drilling through my mind, I found it hard to concentrate and my work was just continuous amounts of scribbling out and wrong answers. Physics was the same for me.

Trig was probably the best of the 4 subjects. I'd somehow managed to cool down from my Latin Meltdown during the two sciences and was able to fully concentrate. Dr Hager certainly appreciated this. I had a few botches and errors, but overall the lesson turned out alright. I still knew I had some adjusting to do, because I wasn't in High School anymore, not like I used to be.

The sheer combination of subjects had me collapsing on my bed and hugging at the sheets as I got to my room. I felt down, depressed, a failure. First girl at Hell-ton—it was nicknamed for a very good reason—and already I was struggling like a fish out of the water. I slid off my bag and stripped out of my uniform and into something more comfortable, something more me. With a great struggle I shunned my reading books and turned on to homework. Revise basic Latin and recite for the next day, complete 20 questions worth of Chemistry, 15 worth of Physics and answer a whole chapter worth of Trig. I wasn't sleeping that night. That was for sure.

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**So there's chapter 2. Thanks to all who've reviewed *gives cookie* and I will hopefully update soon. **


	3. Chapter 3

I don't know how I'd done it. But I'd actually avoided being seen all day. I'd dodged and ducked and slipped out of sight when I had to into the darkest of corners until the worst of the crowded halls passed. My teachers, annoyed as they were, were willing to accept me being late by a couple minutes. It wasn't easy being a girl at Welton and following all of Nolan's rules at the same time. I slipped out of Trig with my satchel on my back, a few minutes before the whole hall would become a frenzy, and quickly began to dart down to English. It was my free period, but Mr Keating was nice, I had an invite and I was bored already with reading and walking all the time. About a minute into my escape to English I began to hear the heavy footsteps, began to smell the odours of hormonal boys and ducked under a stair well in hopes of not being caught. The boys stampeded into sight. They shouted and laughed and chucked paper and got shouted at a lot and I was left scared to bits under a dark stair well at 3 in the afternoon. Soon enough the hallway started to clear so that I could run out and hurry down to English. I was nearly 6 minutes late to the meeting with Mr Keating…except it wasn't just him I would be seeing. I ran into the small area outside English with the large trophy cabinets, the pictures of previous students, the banners of the four pillars and at that moment in time: A whole hoard of 17 to 18 year old boys that had probably never expected to see a girl in Welton in their entire life.

"Miss Tanner" Mr Keating grinned from the other side of the hall, "Care to join?"

I looked at him with a dazed expression. What had he done? Had he actually tricked me? Tricked me out of my deal with Mr Nolan? But…but why?

"Well don't stare like a deer, would you like to join us or not? I did invite you after all"

I slowly nodded, gulped and stepped in to join the gathered group of boys. My throat was dry, my mind was blurry. I was so confused. The boys around me were whispering, laughing, some evened wolf whistled. I fumbled around in my bag for my poetry book and pulled it out, doing my best to avoid the many gazes.

"Miss Tanner this is my English Class, English Class this is Miss Tanner. Now we best get back to the lesson…" Mr Keating took an eye at his clipboard and spied out a name, "Mr… Pitts? That's a rather unfortunate name. Mr Pitts where are you?"

A giant of a boy raised his hand slowly to the small rounds of laughter going through the group.

"Mr Pitts" Mr Keating continued, "Open your book to page 542 and read the first stanza of the poem you find there."

I fingered out the page, like the rest of the class, in my book and found 'To the Virgins to Make Much of Time'. I remembered it, barely. It was a faded memory from a summer long ago.

"Go on. It's somewhat appropriate" Mr Keating said

Pitts sighed and cleared out his throat.

_Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,  
Old time is still a-flying :  
And this same flower that smiles to-day  
To-morrow will be dying._

"Thank you Mr Pitts." Said Keating to the boy before turning back on the entire class, "'_Gather ye rosebuds while ye may!'. _The Latin term for that sentiment is Carpe Diem. Now who knows what that means?"

A red headed boy with glasses shot his hand straight up. No hesitation. No moment to question if his answer was right. He just knew. If the question had been asked at Ridgeway, people would slowly repeat it back to the teacher, others would continue to ponder over it. Some would give up quickly, Chet Danburry being one of the first to come to mind. He was Chris' boyfriend, but that didn't stop me from considering him an idiot. The most he could do was calculate where to throw the ball in a football match, let alone solve an algebra problem. Some people in the class would continue to search for answers, but eventually they'd give up, every last member. Mr Keating gestured for the red head to speak.

"Carpe Diem" He said, "That's 'Seize the Day'"

"Very good, Mr…"

"Meeks" The red head responded.

"Meeks. Another unusual name"

I felt my skin tingle as an alien hand moved around my waist. I turned to my side and saw a boy, a wild grin on his face and eyes gleaming. He winked. I shuffled away. He persisted.

"Seize the day!" Mr Keating cried, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. Why does the writer use these lines?"

"Because he's in a hurry" The boy with his arm snaked around my waist, refusing to let me go, said

"No. DING! Thank you for playing anyway. And if you could be so kind as not to make our guest feel uncomfortable I would be grateful"

The class snickered at the boy as he unwound his arm and _finally_ left me alone. He shrugged it off.

"Just being friendly" He sighed to another round of laughter.

"We are food for worms, lads…and _lady_. That is the answer. Because believe it or not each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die."

Everyone uncomfortably shared a look, a look to remind themselves that they were living in a reality, a reality where eventually we would cease to exist and there was no coming back after death. My fingers further tightened around my poetry book as I thought about how I'd learnt that lesson the hard way.

"Now I'd like you to step forward over here and peruse some of the faces from the past. You've walked past them many times, but I don't think you've really looked at them"

The boys started to shuffle closer, eyes zooming in on the faces. I slowly made my way over too. I'd seen them, looked at them, _perused_ them as Mr Keating said. They were just batch upon batch of hard faced boys that later went on to fill the stock markets, banks, hospitals and businesses.

"They're not that different from you are they?" Mr Keating said as the boys eyed up the past thems.

"Gender is probably a key difference" I sighed aloud, earning a few chuckles. Others glared at me harshly like I was the spawn of Satan. Charming.

Mr Keating shrugged off my comment with a small laugh, "Same haircuts. Full of hormones just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things just like many of you. Their eyes are full of hope just like you. Did they wait till it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because you see gentleman… and _lady_, these boys are now fertilising daffodils. But if you listen real close you can hear them whisper their legacy to you."

Each and every boy looked at the English Teacher suspiciously. As did I. He sounded completely loopy and yet…inspiring.

"Go on, lean in." Mr Keating insisted "Listen. You hear it?"

We all leant forward and slowly we began to hear. The distant echoes of a lost legacy, ready to be passed on to all of us. _Carpe Diem_. Of course if I looked only a few people over I would see Keating whispering out the message of his lesson. Like I said: loopy, but if I listened very carefully I could hear it. Not a teacher's whisper, but a small dose of inspiration, inspiration to seize the day.

With a long, silent pause, Keating clapped his hands together and ushered the boys back to class.

"Lesson's over!" He cried.

The boys slowly filtered out of the hall and into the classroom. I watched them take final glances at me just to check that I wasn't a dream to them, that I was an actual living, breathing girl standing in their actual hallway.

"So what did you think Miss Tanner" Keating asked me.

"It would be nice if you didn't trick me next time" I sighed.

"I'm sorry, but I was worried that if you knew, you might not come. You see, you need to be in a class Miss Tanner, an actual class with other students. I don't think I can facilitate your learning if you're busy bored out your brains by the fact you have no friends, no one to really talk to."

"Mr Nolan said that I—"

"Well I'm telling you that I disagree with Mr Nolan. I think that being part of a collective _will_ benefit you. So, what d'you say? You won't have to attend our private lessons, just my normal ones; you'll still have your free periods."

"I'll think about" I sighed.

"Carpe Diem Miss Tanner. Remember."

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**And there it is chapter 3. Thank you to suttonsays for the review. I hope this chapter clears up some concerns, but I'll just say now that the girls in the previous chapter were just there for the assembly for their brothers. Not for being at the school themselves. I'm sorry I didn't make that clear in the chapter and I have since updated chapter 2 to be more accurate.**


	4. Chapter 4

It felt strange to say, but all I actually looked forward to was English. Of course I loved the subject in the first place, but ever since the lesson with the boys I felt more at home. More together with life. Of course I wasn't always welcome, but at other times the door was happily left open for me to walk through. As anyone could imagine I ended up attending a second lesson of English. I was late, but I still had to keep up some form of sneakiness; the news hadn't reached every boys' ears that I was roaming the school halls.

"Miss Tanner." Mr Keating smiled as I pushed open the class door, "How nice to see you again. Now if you would just take a seat…"

There were no seats to take. Not one. The seat I'd originally chosen to sit in was taken up by a shy sandy haired boy who, like me, probably took the seat for the benefit of the outdoor view. It was quite something. Mr Keating scratched his head for a while before scurrying out of the class and quickly returning with a stiff backed wooden chair. He placed it at the end of his desk and presented it like a throne fit for a princess. I slowly made my way up and sank into the seat. Perfect. I was at the very front of the class for everyone to see. I pulled out my text and tried my best to avoid the curious gazes that clearly hadn't adjusted to the sight of a girl just yet. Keating sank down into his own chair, pulled out his copy of the text and began flicking through pages.

"Gentlemen open your text to page 21 of the introduction." Mr Keating said in a bored manner, "That includes you Miss Tanner" He whispered. I weakly smiled even though I responded to his instruction whether he said my name or not, "Mr Perry would your read the opening paragraph of the preface entitled 'understanding poetry'?"

"Understanding Poetry by Doctor J Evans Pritchard PhD" The Perry boy began in a clear and confident voice. I scanned the words dully as he readied to read through the words of man so intent on making poetry more about academics than emotions, "To fully understand poetry we must first be fluent with its metre, rhyme and figures of speech, then asked two questions: 1. How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered? And 2. How important is that objective?"

As he began to calmly carry on the man's ridiculousness, Mr Keating got up from his chair, grabbed a stick of chalk and began roughly sketching out a graph based on Pritchard's supposed scoring scale. It was all something to do with importance and perfection that sound like a mess in my head, but then poetry people worked weirdly. All were philosophers like artists as my father put it; they didn't quite make sense all of the time. The Perry boy, after he finished, slipped off his reading glasses and looked up at the teacher.

"Excrement" Mr Keating said aloud catching the attention of every single person in the room, "That is what I think of Mr J Evans Pritchard. We're not laying pipe, we're talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like American bandstand? 'Well I like Byron, I give him a 42, but I can't dance to it'"

I chuckled. My cousins had a thing for bandstand. They'd watch it every family holiday we had. They'd curl up at the foot of the sofa and sometimes even get up and dance along like they were giddy on champagne and I would watch them uninterestedly.

"Now I want you to rip out that page" Mr Keating said. We all stared at him as though he was absurd. I mean sure Pritchard spoke nonsense, but to rip out the page?

"Go on" Keating insisted, "Rip out the entire page"

The class exchanged glances.

"You heard me rip it out. Rip it out! Go on, rip it out"

And then I heard the first long tear that caught everyone's attention. It was the same boy who insisted in having his arm around my waist the other day, hand proudly waving the recently torn page bearing the work of Doctor J Evans Pritchard PhD.

"Thank you Mr Dalton" Mr Keating said with a triumphant look, "You know tell you what don't just tear out that page, tear out the entire introduction. I want it gone—history! Leave nothing of it! Rip it out! Rip!"

And then came the next few tears. Some cautious, others brutal. I stared at my book and then back at Keating who gave me a looks as to say "Just do it". I sighed, grabbed the page and tore and I was so glad I tore that page because it felt so relaxing and care free and different. I'd never torn a page before; I didn't want to tear a page before, but this page deserved to be torn.

"It's not the bible, you're not going to go to hell for this" Mr Keating said to the few who looked as though they'd been asked to commit murder. I ripped out the last few pages of my introduction and happily joined in with the fun and festivities of the lesson. It was freeing and inspiring and different. Not even Ridgeway would do such a thing.

"What the hell is going on here?!" We all spun round and broke away from her rip fest to see McAllister standing in the door way.

"I don't hear enough rip!" Mr Keating cried as he entered with a bin for all our paper. McAllister stared at him with the look of a goldfish.

"Mr Keating" He said.

"Mr McAllister" The English teacher grinned

"I'm sorry…I… I didn't know you were here"

"I am"

I leant my head down and tried my hardest not to show the smile creeping up my face.

"Ah so you are" McAllister said trying his best to make a small happy joke about the situation. His eyes landed on me for a brief moment and I could sense his surprise. Clearly he didn't know about Keating's little plan, but McAllister refrained from commenting, "Excuse me"

The Latin teacher slowly backed out the room taking a scan of the room before leaving.

"Keep ripping!" Mr Keating happily continued, "This is a battle, a war! And the casualties will be your hearts and souls"

I scrunched up the remainder of my introduction into a tight ball and chucked it into the bin that Keating passed around

"Now in my class you will learn to think for yourselves again, you will learn to savour words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. Now I see that look on Mr Pitts' eye like 19th century literature has nothing to do with going to business school or medical school, right? Maybe." Everyone turned to look at Gerard, as his parents called him, redness starting to seep into his cheeks, "Mr Hopkins you may agree with him, thinking 'Yes we should simply study our Mr Pritchard and learn our rhyme and metre and go quietly about the business of achieving other ambitions. Or Perhaps you Miss Tanner"

Keating swivelled around to look at me, as did every other pair of eyes in the class.

"Clearly you have enough ability to get into the Ivy League seeing as you're here and of course neither Shakespeare nor Byron will get you that degree in Law or Physics or perhaps even business. Well whether that be or not, I have a little secret for you. Huddle up. Huddle up!"

We all got up from our seats and leant forward. I got some strange looks as I leant in as part of the gathered group, but most shrugged off their curiosities and accepted that I was one of them now. The Meeks boy for certain didn't seem too bothered. A little bit dazed, but he didn't glare, he didn't treat me like I was diseased, he just gave me a weak and friendly smile and just carried on. We all watched Keating crouched down in the middle group, taking a full attention.

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute." He began, "We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race and the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, Law, Business, Engineering: these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life, but poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for. To quote form Whitman:

_O ME! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;_

_Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill'd with the foolish;_

_Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)_

_Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew'd;_

_Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;_

_Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;_

_The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?_

_Answer._

_That you are here—that life exists, and identity;_

_That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse._

"That the powerful play goes on, and _you_ may contribute a verse"

The English teacher looked up thoughtfully, a passionate smile crossing his face,

"What will your verse be?"

Everyone took a moment for thought, even me, because I didn't really know what I was supposed to be doing with life. I was at one of the best schools in the country, the only girl to ever make it and yet, I hadn't clue what I'd be planning by the end of the year. I wasn't sure if I wanted to study business, to potentially lead a company in future, or study medicine, become a doctor, perhaps study law? I didn't know because I didn't really know where I was supposed to stand in the world. Was I supposed to make children and look pretty? Or make a difference? Mr Keating snapped me out of my thoughts before I had a chance to work it out.

"Right that is the end of the lesson. Best get packed up, lunch is next"

The class hooted and cheered; they clearly had a favourite part of the day.

"Yes, yes" Mr Keating chuckled as he packed away his poetry book and tucked in his desk chair, "Now come on you don't want to be late."

The boys filtered out whilst I was busy still packing up my satchel.

"Are you coming to lunch Miss Tanner?" Mr Keating asked me waiting at the class door, "If you are you might want to hurry; the best seats go fast"

"Oh I'm not eating with the boys" I replied, "Nolan insists that I dine in the kitchen, I thought you knew that"

"Ah yes, must of slipped my mind. Well enjoy your lunch, I'll see you next lesson"

**I finally updated, Hoorah! So there's chapter 4 for you guys and I'd just like to say a thank you to those that have followed, favourited (Bad English, I know), reviewed and even just viewed. Just thank you. Hopefully chapter 5 won't take too long for me to write and it will be up...eventually.**


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